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Apr. 13th, 2009 07:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI was thinking, as I worked on Igor in the garage tonight, that the Mindless Self Indulgence album that No-LJ-James left in my car after our trip to Gary would be excellent working-on-car music.
I told myself I was going to write something interesting in this update instead of just car stuff, but time has gotten away from me. If you're bored by car stuff, feel free to move along. There isn't anything else here this time.
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posicat and I tracked the failure to start issue the Neon was having down to a bad wire in the connector of the crankshaft position sensor. If the car doesn't know what point in its rotation the crankshaft is at, it doesn't know how to time the ignitions, and doesn't produce a spark. Simple enough in concept. Actually narrowing it down to that on Friday evening was interesting.
So that's fixed. Then I went to the junkyard on Saturday morning and found a replacement dashboard cover, a heater controls panel (I can direct the airflow in my car again! Yay!), a headlight assembly that isn't all yellowed and clouded, and a wheel bearing and steering knuckle. Haven't put the latter two in yet, but it's on my list of things to do.
Unfortunately, though the crankshaft sensor fix has resulted in a car that will fire up reliably, it's still stuttering at idle and it hesitates a little bit when I accelerate, which I'd thought was being caused by the sensor problem. The problems also seem to coincide with a slipping and squealing belt, so I decided maybe those two things might be related and that maybe an engine accessory was intermittently losing driving force from the v-belt and that was causing the engine to stutter.
I called upsabrinageek to run the theory by her. With her agreement and advice, I went out to the garage tonight to tighten up the alternator belt. Then I drove out to Sears to replace the ratchet that I'd kind of forgotten I'd broken at the junkyard. Curses. Got dinner for Moira and I and the dog while I was out too, though not at the same place. Much as Kuma would love McDonald's he's getting kibble.
I got back and tightened up the alternator adjustment bolt. I started up the car and the squealing seems to be rather reduced, but stuttering is still happening, especially if I put the car in reverse. Well, next step is checking and replacing plugs and wires. I'm not a 100 percent sure if the belt is tight enough either. The book says to apply 10 pounds of force between pulleys and measure the deflection of the belt. Yeah, sure. Let me just remove the entire side of the engine compartment so I can see what I'm doing and I'll get right on that.
I'm going to drive it tomorrow and see if the squeal is actually gone. The belt itself looks ok, to my untrained eye.
I should write about seeing my family and seeing Sabrina over the weekend and how nice that was. But shower and bed now. Dog is tired. And dirty.
I told myself I was going to write something interesting in this update instead of just car stuff, but time has gotten away from me. If you're bored by car stuff, feel free to move along. There isn't anything else here this time.
posicat and I tracked the failure to start issue the Neon was having down to a bad wire in the connector of the crankshaft position sensor. If the car doesn't know what point in its rotation the crankshaft is at, it doesn't know how to time the ignitions, and doesn't produce a spark. Simple enough in concept. Actually narrowing it down to that on Friday evening was interesting.So that's fixed. Then I went to the junkyard on Saturday morning and found a replacement dashboard cover, a heater controls panel (I can direct the airflow in my car again! Yay!), a headlight assembly that isn't all yellowed and clouded, and a wheel bearing and steering knuckle. Haven't put the latter two in yet, but it's on my list of things to do.
Unfortunately, though the crankshaft sensor fix has resulted in a car that will fire up reliably, it's still stuttering at idle and it hesitates a little bit when I accelerate, which I'd thought was being caused by the sensor problem. The problems also seem to coincide with a slipping and squealing belt, so I decided maybe those two things might be related and that maybe an engine accessory was intermittently losing driving force from the v-belt and that was causing the engine to stutter.
I called up
sabrinageek to run the theory by her. With her agreement and advice, I went out to the garage tonight to tighten up the alternator belt. Then I drove out to Sears to replace the ratchet that I'd kind of forgotten I'd broken at the junkyard. Curses. Got dinner for Moira and I and the dog while I was out too, though not at the same place. Much as Kuma would love McDonald's he's getting kibble.I got back and tightened up the alternator adjustment bolt. I started up the car and the squealing seems to be rather reduced, but stuttering is still happening, especially if I put the car in reverse. Well, next step is checking and replacing plugs and wires. I'm not a 100 percent sure if the belt is tight enough either. The book says to apply 10 pounds of force between pulleys and measure the deflection of the belt. Yeah, sure. Let me just remove the entire side of the engine compartment so I can see what I'm doing and I'll get right on that.
I'm going to drive it tomorrow and see if the squeal is actually gone. The belt itself looks ok, to my untrained eye.
I should write about seeing my family and seeing Sabrina over the weekend and how nice that was. But shower and bed now. Dog is tired. And dirty.
